


Shot in the Dark

by lunasenzanotte



Category: Men's Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Criminals, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Attempt at Humor, Burglary, Crimes & Criminals, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Mild Blood, Organized Crime
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-04-06 14:31:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19064566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunasenzanotte/pseuds/lunasenzanotte
Summary: Eric and Dele are professional burglars who get hired to steal important documents from a judge. On his mission to retrieve the documents from the judge’s house, Eric comes across a room that wasn’t on the blueprints, and inside finds a scared boy begging him to kill him. Against his better judgment (and Dele’s desperate yelling), he decides to put the original mission aside and save the boy…





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from the song by Within Temptation, which actually sort of inspired the whole fic and I see it as some kind of a theme song.
> 
> This is my first time writing Tottenham. I don't know what possessed me, but these people just fit the plot perfectly and I couldn't imagine writing this with anyone else. 
> 
> Many thanks to the amazing @prompt_fills as always for pushing me through (I'm still going to need that little push at the end).

“I’m in,” Eric says, clacking the door shut behind him carefully. 

“Good. Time,” Dele’s voice reminds him through the earpiece, and he pushes the button on his watch. Dele is holding the alarm system in check and the cameras on loop, but the damn system has a safety catch they haven’t managed to find a way around. Which means that he only has time until it decides to reset and run a check-up of itself.

Aiming his flashlight on the walls briefly, careful to avoid the windows, Eric makes his way across the hall. There is a corridor on the right, leading to the dining room and kitchen, and the one on the left leads to the office. He has the blueprints of the house memorized, and if he should hesitate, Dele has them on hand. The problem is that he’s looking for a needle in a haystack. 

“Try the office,” Dele says. “It’s the safest bet, and we don’t have too much time.”

“Okay,” Eric responds and goes left.

The house is completely quiet - of course they have the judge’s itinerary and made sure he would be out of town the night they’d break in, but that’s not what Eric means. The house feels suffocatingly quiet - thick carpets, heavy curtains, massive furniture and double doors, no air-conditioning, not even one ticking clock. Eric would go mad in such silence.

“How does it look?” Dele asks him as Eric opens the door to the office.

“It looks like I should’ve studied more and become a judge,” Eric chuckles, checking out the surface of the desk.  _ Who in the twenty-first century still uses golden-tipped pens? _

“Well, find the damn documents and you’ll be definitely better off than now,” Dele says. “There should be a safe in there.”

Eric circles the room with the flashlight. A heavy-looking portrait of some old man in old-fashioned clothes catches his attention. It must be the judge’s grandfather or someone like that, probably also a judge. Eric wouldn’t want to have this thing behind his back. He’d feel like the old man was watching him - and judging him - constantly.

He carefully takes the portrait off the wall and chuckles. People will never change.

“The safe is here,” he says, holding the flashlight between his teeth for a moment to reach for his tools. He checks the watch in the meantime.  _ Good. _

The lock is quite secure, German stuff, without a doubt. Eric hates these. But - they are way better than the mechanical ones that require the safe to be completely damaged in the process of getting inside. Those that rely on wires and circuits are much more vulnerable. Not like people realize that.

It takes him exactly three minutes to figure the lock out, and another two to get inside. Perfect time. 

“Done,” he says and opens the door.

“Are they in there?” Dele asks hopefully. 

“No,” Eric says, making sure he doesn’t move anything in the safe. “Just some money and a couple of Rolex watches. Quite hideous.”

“Shit,” Dele says. 

Eric taps on the walls of the safe to make sure there is not an additional compartment somewhere, but nothing sounds hollow. He closes the safe again and puts the portrait back in its place.

“Try the desk,” Dele says.

“I wouldn’t think of that without you, Sherlock,” Eric mumbles, opening the drawers. They are not locked. If the judge isn’t a complete idiot, he wouldn’t put anything valuable in there. “Nothing. I’ll try the bookcase.”

The bookcase looks well organized, but not for someone who didn’t create the system. The file could be hidden in any of the books for all he knows, after all. Not that it would be the cleverest idea, but if it’s the case, he’d have to go through each of the books. And he definitely doesn’t have the time for that.

He opts for a quicker check, half-pulling the books out and aiming the flashlight on the shelves behind them, and also on the tops of the books. He’d see any papers potentially sticking out. But save for a couple of post it notes in the law books he finds, it doesn’t seem like the judge was stupid enough to put anything in there.

He reaches for the thickest tome rather haphazardly, just because it’s such a ridiculously thick and decorated thing, without a doubt some family heirloom. 

And something happens.

It feels like the bookcase clicks and sort of detaches itself from the wall. Eric jumps back just in time as it swings aside, revealing a door in the wall.  _ Well, this looks promising. _

“Dele?” he says as he inspects the door.  _ Too big to be a safe, unless the safe would be as big as a regular room, and why on earth would the judge have two of them in one room? _

“What?”

“There’s a… a door, behind the bookcase, probably a secret room or something.”

He can practically see Dele frowning. Dele hates it when something doesn’t go according to plan, he hates surprises. “There’s nothing on the blueprints,” he says. “Where you are, there should be just… wall.”

“Well, there’s not,” Eric says, inspecting the coding machine next to it. “It’s either a giant safe, or… one of those panic rooms, maybe?”

“Do you think they’re in there?” Dele asks. “I mean, you don’t have much time, but if he took so much care to hide it…”

“Yeah, I think they’re definitely in there,” Eric mumbles, already busy unscrewing the top of the coding machine next to the door. He has no time to guess, deactivating it is faster and easier. A regular burglar would probably not be able to do that, if he actually found the door, so it seems to be just enough for hiding from a potential intruder. But Eric is not a regular burglar. 

The door clicks. Eric opens it and aims the flashlight inside. All he sees is a wall. He’s ready to curse when it occurs to him to aim it down.

“Is that it? Is it a safe?” Dele asks.

“No,” Eric says and frowns. “There’s… a staircase.”

“What the hell…” Dele mumbles, probably looking at the blueprints in confusion. Eric knows he’s walking on thin ice now. The house is nothing like the blueprints, which means that Dele can’t safely guide him through this anymore. 

“A staircase,” Eric repeats. “That leads down. Maybe a shelter?”

“We don’t have hurricanes, what kind of nonsense is that?” Dele asks, personally offended that someone has decided to build a room in their house and not tell him, or at least have the decency to mark it on the blueprints.

Eric steps on the stairs carefully. It’s pitch dark under his feet and if it’s a safe room, he definitely doesn’t feel safe in there. Suddenly he stops. There is a sound in the darkness. 

Eric pulls out the gun Dele had insisted on him taking, instinctively, and aims both the gun and the flashlight in the direction the sound came from.

And freezes.

Something glints in the darkest corner, and Eric realizes with horror that the glint are someone’s  _ eyes _ .

When he manages to aim the flashlight in the right angle, he indeed sees a person, a boy, huddled in the corner. The sound, the clinking sound he heard, comes from the chains - or  _ whatever the fuck -  _ hanging off his wrists and curling around him on the floor like two snakes. 

Eric leans over the wall more to support himself, and accidentally finds the switch. Sickly pale light floods the room and makes the boy curl up on himself and hide his face momentarily. There are  _ definitely _ chains attaching him to the wall, ending in thick leather cuffs attached to his wrists. Eric quickly assesses the length. By no means does the boy have a chance to reach the staircase, or anything located further than approximately the middle of this makeshift cell, or whatever the hell this is. 

“Fuck,” Eric whispers. 

The boy finally lifts his head, squinting into the light. He looks awfully, awfully young, a shower of freckles across his nose standing out in the pale light, the worn-out T-shirt hanging loose on his frame. Against all logic, when he sees the gun in Eric’s hand, he relaxes, like Eric and the gun aren’t the worst things that could be in the room with him. He looks almost curious, or hopeful. It doesn’t make sense. Any of this.

“Eric?” Dele says in his ear, and Eric almost jumps up. “What is in there?”

“A kid,” Eric mumbles. “It’s a fucking kid.”

There’s silence on the other end, and even if Dele was saying something, Eric thinks he wouldn’t hear him over the sound of his own beating heart anyway.

The boy moves again and Eric just stands there, waiting for some explanation. The boy’s eyes are fixed on the gun, not Eric, like Eric isn’t important at all.

“Please…” he whispers finally, as he deems Eric to be taking too long. “Just kill me. Please.”

Eric thinks that he’s hallucinating. What is he supposed to say to that?

The boy scrambles up to all fours and crawls closer to Eric, as much as the chains allow him, and looks up at him.

“Please,” he repeats. “Just be quick about it.”

“What the fuck…” Eric finally says and lowers the gun.

“If they sent you, I… I don’t… I don’t know anything more, I swear,” the boy says, apparently not realizing that Eric has no idea what he is talking about. “I know nothing more than I’ve already told him, and I swear I’ve never told anyone else.”

Eric just stares at him. He doesn’t know what else to do, and his earpiece is silent as well. Dele apparently doesn’t know what to do either.

The boy waits for a moment, then gets on his knees. Eric doesn’t move. The boy sits on his heels, then finally covers his face with his hands. “I… I don’t know… how… just… just do it already!” he almost shrieks at Eric.

Eric slowly puts his gun on the ground, placing it carefully out of the boy’s reach. Contrary to all logic again, it seems like he’s only now positively scared the boy. When he moves closer to him, the boy crawls back, until he’s huddled in the dark corner again, pressed against the grainy wall. If Eric can judge, he’s quite close to hyperventilating now. 

“I don’t know… you don’t have to…” he lets out between little puffs of breath. 

When Eric reaches up to him, he closes his eyes and whimpers. There’s a fading bruise under his eye.  _ Maybe trying to touch him is not the best idea. _

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Eric says, attempting a comforting tone. “Hey.”

The boy cracks an eye open, but doesn’t seem to be willing to leave his corner nest.

“So they didn’t send you?”

“I really don’t know what you are talking about, kid,” Eric says.

“At least ask the kid about the documents,” Dele sighs, apparently already resigned to the idea of them being screwed.

“I doubt that he knows where he is himself,” Eric says.

The kid is now watching him with narrowed eyes, like he’s ready to screw them shut whenever Eric moves again. Eric realizes he must look like some kind of a madman, talking seemingly to himself.

“You’re a thief or something, right?” he asks, and Eric doesn’t even have the strength to correct him or to be offended by apparently looking like a regular thug to the boy. “You  _ should _ kill me, then. I’ve seen you.” 

_ Now, there’s a bit of logic. _ Eric sighs. “How about you forget about me killing you?”

Once again, it has exactly the opposite effect than he intended. The boy looks like he’s about to cry now. “Then what do you want?”

“I doubt you have what I want,” Eric sighs. “Unless you know where the old bastard put certain important documents.”

The kid blinks. It probably surprises him that someone like Eric is interested in documents and not gold or money. 

“I don’t know what documents you mean, but he sometimes puts things over there,” he says and nods somewhere behind Eric’s shoulder.

Eric turns around. He had been so focused on the boy that it didn’t occur to him to look around the room - if it can be called that. It looks like a slightly bigger grave.

There’s a locker by the staircase. It’s a regular locker, old thing, it doesn’t even have a lock on.  _ Well, why should it, it’s already behind a lock. _ He opens it carefully.

One entire shelf contains bottles and things that look like straight out of a medical cabinet. He has no idea what most of the stuff is, and he doesn’t want to know, actually. The way the kid shuffles nervously when he touches one of the bottles tells him enough.

At the bottom of the locker, he finds pieces of clothing and something that looks like it used to be a towel in its better days, and some more pieces of junk. The top shelf looks empty, but when he feels around it, he touches something that feels unmistakably like paper. He pulls it out. He’s looking at a thick stack of papers. Eric only has to flip through them to know that he’s just found what he came for. Then he glances at the kid, who is watching him from his corner, and with heavy heart puts the papers back.

“You’re not going to take them?” the boy asks incredulously. 

“No.” Eric can’t believe he said that.

Judging from the groan in his ear, neither can Dele.

“Why? You said…” 

Eric sighs, carefully closing the locker again, making sure it looks just as it did before. “Not while you’re here,” he says. “What would happen if the judge came here and found the documents missing, and realized someone was here?”

The boy pales even more, if it’s actually possible, and just looks at Eric with tears in his eyes, completely frozen on spot.  _ Well, that was unnecessary, Eric, you idiot. _

Still, Eric profits from the moment of paralysis to reach for the boy’s hand and inspect the cuffs. They are not completely snug against his wrists, but tight enough to make it impossible to slide them off. The chains are solid metal, too.  _ Fuck. _

He’s got the stuff to get past the most advanced technologies, but paradoxically, this would require the good old tools. The scissors he has to cut through wires aren’t nearly strong enough to do anything about the chains, or locks, or even the cuffs. Also, the small screw driver is meant for tiny desktops, not these bolts.

His watch beeps warningly. The boy startles and twists his hand out of Eric’s grip.

“Eric…” Dele’s voice hisses in his ear.

“I…” Eric says. 

“You need to get out of there. Now.”

“I can’t leave the kid here,” he says.

“You have to,” Dele says, but there is a hint of rage in his voice as well. “I can’t hold it back much longer. Get out of there.”

“Fine,” Eric says, and then switches the earpiece off. Dele doesn’t have to hear anything. If he heard him now, he’d probably kill him over the earpiece.

“Listen to me now,” he says. “I’ve never been here. Nothing happened here.”

The boy lifts his eyes to him. “If you want to make sure I don’t tell…”

“No, I will not kill you,” Eric says resolutely. “I’ll help you. How does that sound?”

Once again, the reaction he gets is completely different from what he expects.

“Like something I’ve heard before,” the boy mumbles, and then curls up in a ball, losing all interest in Eric.

Eric’s earpiece comes alive. If Dele put the effort in it to activate it by force, he must be really pissed. “If you don’t tell me you’re on your way out of the house already, I’m going to drag you out myself.”

“I’m going now,” he mumbles, shooting one last look at the kid, who has his face turned away from him and is putting all the effort in pretending he’s not crying, when actually his shoulders are shaking so much Eric would have to be blind and deaf to buy into it. He gathers his gun and flashlight, and switches off the light.

He gets out of the house just in time. His watch beeps twice about three seconds after he closes and locks the door again, and the security system comes alive once more. Eric still feels his heart beating madly in his chest as he looks back. He has to go back, he knows as much. He’s not sure if he wants to. 


	2. Two

“Let me see once more,” Dele says, circling around Eric like a fly around a piece of cake. “You found the documents. In an unsecured locker. Just there for the taking. And you left them there.”

Eric sighs. “Dele…”

“You left them there.”

“I wasn’t fucking prepared for this!” Eric yells at him.

Dele sighs. “Yes, I get it,” he says, somewhat guiltily. “The blueprints were worthless. I don’t know how…”

“That’s not what I mean!” Eric snaps. “The blueprints were the smallest of my problems.”

Dele finally stops circling around him and sits on the other chair. Eric leans his elbows on the table and rubs his eyes with his fists. He’s damn tired, but he knows that he wouldn’t fall asleep until morning, even if he went straight to bed.

“I’ve seen people afraid that I’d kill them, but none of them have ever tried to get in the best position for me to do it,” Eric says. “The kid was damn concerned whether I wanted him to kneel or lie down when I’d shoot him!”

“Shit,” Dele whispers. “But…  _ who _ is it?”

Eric shakes his head. “I have no idea,” he says. “None of what he said made sense. First he thought someone sent me to kill him, or get something out of him… but he only said ’they’. All in all, he definitely thought being dead was the best thing that could happen to him. And I quite get it.”

Dele gives him a long stare. “Eric,” he says carefully. “You’re not thinking about what I think you are thinking about, are you?”

“Look, Dele, I have to go back no matter what, to get the documents,” Eric says. “If I take the kid as well it won’t make a difference.”

“It will make a hell of a difference!” Dele objects. “It’s not a piece of paper, Eric, it’s a human being. And human beings are what? Unpredictable!” 

In other words, human beings don’t work well with Dele. He likes computers and locks and codes. Not unreasonable, flimsy, irrational humans. Like Eric, for that matter.

“Well, but the kid was also right when he said that he’d seen me. So if I steal the documents and leave him there…” Eric shrugs. “He can’t quite tell the judge the documents have evaporated, or that he slept through me stealing them. Or you want me to really kill him?”

“Stop it!” Dele snaps. “Stop putting words in my mouth, okay? I’m trying to think of something!”

Eric falls silent, just because Dele is already half on his hook. He gets up and pours himself a cup of coffee. It’s long cold, but he doesn’t mind. He just needs to stay awake.

“Dele, I can do it,” he says then, when he deems Dele to be undermined enough. “I’ll get him out of there.”

“You said he was… shit, Eric, how do you know how he will react? He panics, does something dumb, and we’re all screwed!” Dele says. “Just imagine that… what if he refuses to leave that room for the start? Eh? He doesn’t even fucking  _ know _ you. He doesn’t trust you. I wouldn’t trust you in his place, sorry.”

“Thanks,” Eric makes a face. “But I’ll think of something. You just need to keep the system in check for me once again. I’ll know where I’ll be going now, I’ll need half the time.”

Dele seems to be considering all the options while Eric sips on the coffee. “The documents are the priority,” he says then, in the last attempt to make it look like he has the situation under control. “We agree on that, don’t we?”

“Yes,” Eric says obediently. Dele has to get his bone to calm down and indulge Eric, it always works that way.

“Fine. Because if we don’t get them, we’re in deep shit. I already have to think of an excuse why we didn’t get them this time.” 

Eric looks at him sheepishly. “An excuse that doesn’t involve the kid?”

“Of fucking course!” Dele says. “I don’t want to have anything in common with that madness of yours. I’m going to do everything in my power to let you get the documents. The kid is your call, your action.”

“Good,” Eric nods.

“I’ll start working on it tomorrow,” Dele grumbles. “We don’t have time to lose.”

 

***

 

When Eric gets out of bed, Dele is already sitting at the computer, with a can of energy drink right next to a ridiculously huge cup of coffee. How Dele’s heart hasn’t exploded yet is beyond Eric.

“I’m looking at the judge’s agenda,” Dele says, by which he means that he’s casually hacked the computer in the judge’s office. “I already have a few tips, but it’s Monday. I’m waiting if his secretary won’t change anything after he comes back from his spa weekend, the old bastard.”

Eric hums and makes his way to the bathroom, trying hard not to think about the kid being left alone in that cold basement for two, maybe three days, while the old bastard sits in a sauna and enjoys a massage afterwards. Eric is no murderer, he just steals things other people need, and he’s never killed anyone, but he feels like he could make an exception once.

He steps into the shower and lets the hot water run over his body, hoping it will help him think. Thinking up a plan is new. It’s always Dele who does the thinking, and most times, Eric would be completely lost without his instructions. But as Dele said, the kid is his problem.

When he turns off the water, he has half a plan, but there is only one thing he knows for sure. He can’t tell Dele any of it, or Dele would murder him using his coffee mug as a weapon, since he’d have nothing better on hand and he would never damage his computer. He quietly gets his laptop from the living room and settles in the kitchen with it, trying to ignore Dele’s fast typing from the other room. It depresses him, because Dele obviously knows what he’s doing, while Eric is literally using Google for his plan.

“Hey!” Dele calls at him when Eric is ready to go from planning to acquiring supplies. “I think we’re set. We’ll go through the plan in the evening, okay?”

“Good,” Eric says. “I need to go get a few things.”

“I better don’t ask why you were googling pet stores in our area, right?” Dele sighs.

“Yeah, for your own good, don’t,” Eric says and grabs his jacket. “And stop going through my browser history. We’ve already discussed that.”

 

***

 

Eric waits until Dele tells him the door is safe to be unlocked. Then he slips inside. Easy as one two three. 

He almost runs through the corridor to the office, pulls on the right book and deactivates the lock on the door behind the bookcase. Then he carefully walks down the stairs, because he doesn’t want to kill himself, and switches on the light.

The kid looks anything but happy to see him, although Eric thinks that there is still certain relief in his eyes when he recognizes him. “You again,” he states and merely scrambles to a half-sitting position.

“I left something in here the last time,” Eric says.

The kid looks to the staircase. Eric had left the door upstairs wide open so that he wouldn’t have to bother himself with it later. But apparently, the sight of it wide open unnerves the kid  _ a lot _ .

“Where is he?” he asks. 

“I haven’t killed him, if you mean that,” Eric says, walking over to the locker. “Not that it wouldn’t be satisfying.”

“I just wouldn’t want him to come back and find you here,” the boy says, trying to sound like he has some kind of control, and it would be hilarious if it also wasn’t breaking Eric’s heart a little. “Which, you know, he could do any minute now.”

“Don’t act like you know where he’s gone,” Eric smirks, stuffing the documents in his backpack. “You don’t even know what day it is, I’m sure.”

The kid looks offended, but also kind of shocked. Eric supposes it’s what confrontation with reality does. “What… of course I know…”

“Oh, really? What day is it?” 

The boy blinks before giving Eric a defying stare. “Friday.”

“Nice try. Tuesday. Want to try with the month?”

“September.”

_ Oh, fuck. _

Eric puts the backpack on the ground and crouches down next to the boy, who is now biting back tears. “That wasn’t correct, was it?” he whispers.

Eric just shakes his head. He doesn’t deem it necessary to tell him how off he actually was.

“Listen,” he says. “I’ll get you out of here. My friend is holding the alarm system in check and the cameras on loop, I have a car ready outside. We can just walk out and nobody will ever know what happened here.”

“No, we can’t!” the boy snaps and pulls his hand back when Eric reaches for it. “I don’t even fucking know your name, I don’t know who you are, I don’t know what you want, I’m not going anywhere with you! For all I know, you can be even worse than him!” 

_ Why, why does Dele always have to be right? _

“Worse?” Eric repeats incredulously. He knows that there’s no time for discussions, but he still hopes he can reason with the kid. “He chained you up in his basement like an animal! What could I possibly do to you that would be worse?”

“What do I know, sell my kidneys? That’s what people who look like you do, I suppose.”

Eric tries hard not to get offended, watching the kid curl up in the corner the furthest away from Eric he can get. Then he looks at his watch. No time for more persuading.  

“I hoped it wouldn’t come to this,” he sighs and unzips the front pocket of the backpack.

He’s thought about how to do this without causing the kid a panic attack since the idea crossed his mind, but unfortunately for them both, he didn’t think of anything except doing it as fast as possible. 

He grabs the syringe with one hand and with the other arm, he knocks the kid to the ground, holding him down with his weight. He uncaps the needle with his teeth and prays to God to be able to do this. One of the junkies he went to seek advice to let him practice on him for twenty quid, but well, it was different. His practice target wasn’t trashing under him desperately.

“What is that?” the boy screams, a panicked caginess in his eyes. “ _ What is that? _ ”

Maybe Eric should have really closed the door.

“All I know is that it’s going to make more damage if you don’t keep still,” he growls, and by some miracle manages to find a vein.

“Don’t…” the boy chokes out, but by that time, Eric is already pulling the needle out.

“You’ll be fine,” he says.  _ I hope _ , he thinks.

There’s a cocktail of betrayal and fear in the boy’s eyes as he fights to stay awake, and Eric feels like the biggest bastard on Earth. Telling himself it’s for the boy’s own good doesn’t help much. 

“I’m really sorry,” he mumbles. “I’m so sorry.”

He reaches in his backpack again and pulls out the compound-action snips the saleswoman in the hardware store handed him when he asked her what was the best tool for cutting through metal and thick leather. Luckily, she didn’t ask any questions. As he finds out, she was also right. The cuffs come off quite easily. 

The kid looks small enough, but the dead weight is something else. Eric curses quite a few times before he manages to drag him up the stairs.

“Eric?” Dele’s voice sounds in his ear.

“If it’s not urgent, I’m a bit busy at the moment,” Eric huffs, trying to figure out how to open the office door without dropping the kid.

“It is urgent,” Dele says. “I forgot that the system will reset itself at midnight no matter how long since the last check-up, so you have two minutes.”

“Fuck you, Dele,” Eric says, heart beating madly in his chest. 

He leans the kid over the wall, opens the office door and then decides to just collect the kid in his arms and run like a mad chicken, because he has nothing to lose.

He kicks the front door shut, drops the kid on a bed of crocuses and locks the door. 

“Eric?” Dele howls in his ear.

“I’m out,” Eric breathes out. “But fuck you.”

 

***

 

“What on earth did you give him?” Dele asks, inspecting the kid from up close like he’s never seen a human being before. Sometimes, Eric thinks Dele should leave the house more often.

“Some anesthetics,” Eric says.

“Where did you get hold of them?” Dele looks at him with suspicion.

“I stole them,” Eric says sheepishly. “At the vet’s.”

Dele’s eyes go wide and he grabs the front of Eric’s sweatshirt. That means Eric has really fucked up. “Are you completely mad? You could have killed him! How can you even… at the vet’s… it’s not an animal, Eric! And you can’t just give someone anesthetics, you have to actually calculate how much to give them based on their weight and… oh my God, we should really take him to hospital!”

Eric looks at him skeptically, waiting for the rant to be over. “Really?” he asks. 

“Okay, maybe not,” Dele sighs and looks at the boy. “I mean… he  _ is _ breathing.”

Eric shrugs. “See?” 

“That doesn’t mean that what you have done is by any means excusable!” Dele barks. “Go at least hide the documents, I don’t want them to be just lying around here.”

“And you?” Eric frowns.

“I better stay here and check that  _ still breathing _ doesn’t change,” Dele says, sitting on the side of the bed, trying to check the boy’s pulse. Not that Eric is an expert, but he thinks that Dele is checking on a completely wrong spot.

He grabs the documents and goes to put them in one of the ingenious hiding places Dele has created around the apartment. He decides to have a shower after that, because damn, he did quite some workout tonight.

Next time he sees Dele, he’s smuggling an extra blanket from the living room to the bedroom.


	3. Three

When Eric comes to the kitchen, Dele is already up, brewing his massive supply of coffee for the day.

“The kid is still alive, I suppose?” Eric asks and sits at the table.

Dele gives him a death stare. “His name is Harry, and yes, he is still alive, by some miracle.”

“Cool,” Eric says. “By chance, have you also found out who he is and what he was doing in the judge’s basement?”

Suddenly, Dele jumps across the kitchen and waves a butter knife in his face. “No, and you are not going to ask him any questions either!” he says and damn, does he look menacing. “Not until he’s ready.”

“When will he be ready?” Eric asks.

“When I say so,” Dele snaps. “Or when he decides to talk about it himself.”

Just then, the kid makes a clammy appearance. He’s wearing one of Eric’s old hoodies… definitely too big for him. Eric is fairly sure Dele threw the kid’s clothes in the trash the moment he got the chance. He shoots a condemning glance at Eric and then starts pretending he doesn’t exist. Fine, Eric can live with that. He also shoots a quick look at the calendar on the wall, and Eric would swear that he paled when he saw the date.

“Sit down,” Dele says, and damn, he sounds so casual that Eric suddenly understands why Dele has already learned things about the kid that Eric didn’t even think of asking. Like his name.

The kid does, but shuffles nervously, like he can’t quite find a comfortable position, or like he doesn’t remember how to sit in a chair. Dele watches him intently. “Does something hurt?” he asks. 

Eric says a quick prayer in his mind. He’s quite sure that he is responsible for quite a few bruises, because he didn’t really have time to be gentle. But the kid just shakes his head and tucks his knees under his chin, pulling the sweatshirt over them. He looks slightly calmer and more comfortable then.

Dele doesn’t say anything. He would  _ yell _ if Eric put his feet on the chair like that.

“There you go,” he says and puts a plate on the table.

The kid just stares at the toasts with butter and marmalade like he doesn’t know what it is, and like he’s not sure if he can touch it or if it’s just for looking. 

“It’s just a toast,” Dele says encouragingly, and then sits next to him, watching him until he picks the toast up and bites into it, like he figures out the kid needs some emotional support. He pushes a mug with tea to him as well. Eric just stares. He’s never seen Dele take care of anything but his computer.

Dele smiles - an event Eric barely remembers happening - and gets up to pour himself some coffee. When he turns around again, the kid is picking up the crumbs from his plate. 

“I… um…” he says when he realizes that both Eric and Dele are looking at him, and takes the finger out of his mouth. 

“Well, that’s appreciation for my cooking,” Dele says. “Eric, you should learn from him.”

Eric makes a noncommittal sound. Suddenly, the presence of the kid makes him nervous, almost like he is to have breakfast in the company of a bomb he didn’t make. He doesn’t know what stupid, insignificant thing will make the bomb explode.

When Dele casually throws one more toast on the kid’s plate, Eric makes a gesture to Dele and walks out of the kitchen. 

“Has it occurred to you that maybe we should know who we have in our house?” he asks.

“Don’t act like I brought this upon us! We were supposed to get the documents, sell them and become rich,” Dele hisses. “Not to adopt a mentally scarred child, dammit!”

“I’m not the one who made him toasts,” Eric mumbles. 

“He was  _ hungry _ !” Dele snaps. “And I only made him toast after  _ you _ brought him to our house. Well, why don’t you just ask him?”

“Because you said I couldn’t!” Eric deadpans. “Besides that, he seems to have taken to you much better.” 

“It could be because I didn’t jab a needle in him,” Dele says. “So maybe you should apologize first.”

“I did…” Eric starts, then remembers that when he did, the kid was already pretty much out of it. “Fine.”

The kid looks positively terrified when they sit at the table, looking at him like they are about to discuss the start of nuclear war.

Dele elbows Eric in the ribs.

“I…” Eric starts. “I… wanted to apologize. For, you know, what I did to you yesterday. I’m sorry.”

The kid narrows his eyes. “Sorry?” he asks. “Sorry for what? Knocking me out with God knows what?”

“I had to,” Eric says, although he could just say “yes”, because the kid quite summed it up. 

“To do something I didn’t ask for?” the kid snaps. “No. Do anything you want to me, but at least leave me conscious while you do it! Have the decency! Don’t be a coward like him!”

Eric takes a deep breath, fighting the nausea the words give him. “Look, I’m sorry. I really am. But I didn’t do anything to you, I swear. I needed to get you out of there as quickly and quietly as possible, and it was the best way, since you weren’t quite… cooperating.”

“I didn’t know you,” Harry mumbles. “I didn’t know what you wanted from me.”

“I know. And I know I could have done it differently, but… all I wanted was to get you out of there. And… I’m not very good at planning.”

The kid looks a bit appeased after that, but still nowhere near becoming friends with Eric. He definitely can’t expect any confession from him just yet. Maybe the best way will be to leave it to Dele.

“I better go set up the next part of the plan,” he says then and gets up.

“That means what?” Harry asks and looks at Dele with worry.

“Nothing involving syringes, I can assure you,” Dele growls. “Nothing involving you, and nothing this dickhead would plan himself, so don’t worry.”

The unthinkable happens. The kid laughs. Actually, honestly laughs, wrinkling his nose like… well, a kid. 

Dele looks like a huge weight has just lifted from his shoulders, and he also looks a bit smug. Without a doubt, he must be thinking that he’s got some superpowers now.

Eric just shakes his head in disbelief and grabs his jacket. He’s not so sure he made a good choice now.

 

***

 

When he comes back in the evening, the house is suspiciously quiet, but Dele is sitting by his computer, hitting the same four keys over and over again, with an occasional furious smashing of the space bar.

“Where’s the… Harry?” Eric corrects himself when he catches Dele’s glance.

“I let him watch the news channel,” Dele says. “He hasn’t moved from the couch since morning.”

Eric shoots a quick glance at the couch, where Harry is apparently catching up with what animals have been born in the London ZOO since he’s last checked.  

Then he looks back at Dele, and realizes that something is not quite right. Dele looks… worried, if Eric’s to put it mildly. 

“What’s up?” Eric asks.

Dele looks at him sheepishly. “I probably did something I shouldn’t have,” he whispers.

Dele? Fucking up is reserved to Eric!

“What?”

“I… I know we’re not supposed to be interested in whatever we steal, but… I read the documents you stole from the judge.”

Eric shrugs. “So what?”

“I know who Harry is,” Dele says. “And I think we might have a problem.”

Eric sits down, because if Dele thinks something is a problem, then it’s more than that. “Well?”

Dele pulls the damn cause of all this madness, the file, closer to him. “You know, the guy who hired us, he thought the judge was biased on the case of the murder of his son,” Dele starts.

“Yeah, I know,” Eric frowns. “Mentioned something about the murderers not being sentenced or something. What does the kid have to do with that? He wouldn’t murder a chicken nugget.”

“Well, turns out it wasn’t just this one case, it was a whole human-trafficking ring, and… well, the judge may have been biased, but also, the prosecution relied on their star witness… except the witness never testified. Because he disappeared.”

Eric just stares at him. “Are you trying to tell me…” 

Dele pushes the file to him. Eric sighs, since he’s not good at reading things, and the language of this looks like some gibberish to him, but the witness mentioned there is indeed called Harry, and Eric isn’t that naive to think it’s just a coincidence. A coincidence is the supposed leader of the ring being also called Harry, but Eric supposes the kid watching pandas in the next room couldn’t lead a ring of schoolboys to steal a lollipop.

“Fine,” he says. “Let’s get things straight.” 

Dele watches him until he’s almost at the door leading to the living room. Then he jumps up and rushes to catch up with him, almost like he’s worried Eric will murder the kid to solve this problem for them.

Eric grabs the remote and switches off the weather forecast. Not like Harry is going to need to know the weather anytime soon, since he doesn’t look like he’s willing to leave the room.

“We need to talk,” Eric says.

Dele immediately takes the place on the sofa, in a reachable distance from Harry, just in case Eric fucks up and scares him again.

“About what?” Harry asks and curls up in the corner of the sofa.

“You, us, and this whole madness,” Eric says. “I’ll go first. I broke into the judge’s house because someone’s hired me to steal the documents he was keeping there. They concern a certain case that has to do with a certain human-trafficking ring led by a certain Harry Kane.”

Judging by the way the kid cowers when he speaks the name, their suspicions weren’t wrong.

“A case where the star witness of the prosecution just… disappeared,” Eric continues. “And we suspect he is sitting on our sofa.”

“And if he is?” Harry asks and looks at him. “What are you going to do? Sell me to Kane? Better kill me, then.”

Dele tuts and pats him on the shoulder comfortingly.

“Well, I don’t know what we are going to do. What  _ can _ we do, after all, not to have either the police or Kane after us?” Eric asks.

“I warned you!” Harry barks. “Don’t say I didn’t! I didn’t ask you to take me out of there. And I did say you should have killed me!” 

“Enough!” Dele interrupts them. “We won’t get anywhere like this. What’s done is done, and so far, nobody knows you are here. If we keep it that way…”

“Keep it that way? Yeah, because the judge will not notice that something’s missing from his basement. Speaking of which, how the hell did you end up in there?” Eric asks. “I thought you were the prosecution’s secret weapon.”

“Not so secret,” Harry mumbles. “And I thought they were on the same side… they  _ should _ be on the same side, shouldn’t they? I went to the prosecutor first, when I betrayed Kane, and told him I’d be dead in a day if he didn’t do anything about it… and he told me he couldn’t help me, if the judge didn’t agree on the protection program. That he could send a patrol to guard my apartment at most.”

“And?”

Harry gives him an incredulous look. “A patrol… Kane would laugh for days at that, after he’d shoot me in front of their very eyes, probably!” he says, and Eric suspects that Harry is highly overrating that Kane, whoever he is. So far he sounds like he could compete with Superman.

“Why didn’t you go to the police?” Dele asks. “Ask for, I don’t know, how is it called… protective custody?”

Eric gives him an incredulous look. As if  _ any _ of them would ever go to the police.

Harry snorts as if to confirm it. “Everyone knew they were on it with Kane’s group,” he says. “Even I knew it. I just didn’t suspect it would be the same with the judge.”

“So you spilled everything you knew,” Eric states. “And only confirmed to him that he really couldn’t let you testify.”

Harry nods and looks at him somewhat sheepishly. “I wasn’t all that innocent either, you know,” he says. “I did small jobs for them, now and then. But then they asked me to get in for real, and I freaked out. I figured if I spilled everything I knew about them, the judge would get me a deal somehow, you know how it works…”

“Sure,” Eric nods. “Only that he didn’t want any of it to get out.”

“He was all like… oh, sure, we’ll get you the deal, and protection, and safe housing, but…” Harry’s voice goes from sarcastic to angry, and then cracks. “Next thing I know, I was there in the…  the basement. He told me Kane thought I was dead, and if Kane thought I was dead, nobody would look for me. Everyone would think Kane got rid of me, and Kane would never admit he didn’t.”

Dele and Eric exchange worried glances.

“So many times I prayed for Kane to appear there and fire a bullet in my head,” Harry whispers and looks at Eric. “When you appeared there, I thought he had sent you. That he found out I wasn’t dead, and sent you to finish me off. Thinking about it, it was stupid of me to think he’d take mercy on me.”

Eric just nods. Dele turns to him.

“What are we going to do, then?” he asks.

“Nothing,” Eric shrugs. “I’m going to deliver the order tomorrow, grab the money, and then we can get out of town. They asked for the documents. Why should I mention I got more than that?”

“It could actually help them,” Dele objects. “Unlike the documents.”

“Excuse me?” Eric raises his brows. “Since when do we care? And, since when are you willing to throw the kid to the wolves?”

“Since when are you the protective one?” Dele folds his arms.

“Since you went completely mental!” Eric snaps. “I didn’t save him from that hell to let him live a worse one! Dele, one word about him being alive, and we can start digging him a grave, given his body is ever found!”

A muffled sob sounds from the corner of the sofa, and Eric runs a hand over his face. “Sorry, forgot you were there,” he mumbles. “Anyways, we just have to hope the old bastard is scared enough of Kane to keep his mouth shut and act like the kid has been dead for ages, not run to him yelling he lost him.”

“Fine,” Dele says. “Deliver the documents then. But I really don’t know where we would be safe from both the police and this… whatever they are.”

“Well, leave that up to me,” Eric says and gets up. “There are things I can actually plan.”


	4. Four

Eric is drinking his second cup of coffee, leaning over the kitchen counter and checking his phone, when Harry walks in, rubbing his eyes. 

“Morning,” he mumbles.

“Morning,” Eric says and slips his phone in his pocket. “If you want coffee, it’s in the kettle.”

“Where’s Dele?” Harry asks. If Dele was up, there would be no coffee left, so it’s a logical question.

“Still sleeping,” Eric says. “Didn’t get much sleep tonight, really.”

Harry looks at him somewhat guiltily. “I screamed at night, didn’t I?”

Eric just glances at him.

“I know I do it,” Harry says. “Sometimes it wakes me up.”

“Yeah,” Eric sighs.

Harry pours himself a cup of coffee and takes a sip. His eyes look unfocused for a moment, like he’s trying to remember the taste. “When you said yesterday you would grab the money and get out of town… did you mean you’d take me with you?” he asks then.

“What do you think?” Eric asks.

“Why would you do it? I’m just… trouble.”

“I knew you were trouble when I decided to save you,” Eric shrugs. “If I didn’t want trouble, I would have left you there. And at the same time, I didn’t get you out to throw you to the wolves. They wanted the documents, fine. What they do with them is their business, if it helps them prove the murder to them or not. But they’ll have to make do without you.”

“I saw it,” Harry whispers, fingers touching the corner of the file lying on the table. 

“What?”

“The murder,” Harry says and looks at him.

Eric returns the gaze calmly. “So what?”

“So what?”

“I’ve seen many things in my life, and most of them were not nice, but nothing obliges me to tell them to anybody,” Eric says and grabs the file. “If the best thing for you is to stay silent, then do. You don’t owe anything to anybody.”

Harry just stares at him, like it’s the first time in his life someone tells him that. For Eric, who’s never lived by anything else, it’s hard to understand.

“When Dele finally gets up, tell him I went to deliver the goods,” he says and walks out.

 

***

 

Dele feels like death, but he definitely gives up on trying to get some more sleep. He spent half of the night trying to figure out a way they could make it out of this situation alive. The other half, he was trying to wake up the screaming kid from whatever nightmares he was having. Whenever he managed to do so, Harry fell asleep again in seconds, so Dele thought he didn’t even remember it.

But as Harry brings him a cup of fresh coffee as soon as he gets out of the bathroom, apparently there is some guilt.

“Eric went to deliver the goods,” Harry says. “Wanted me to tell you.”

“Oh, so you’re finally talking to each other?” Dele asks and sips on the coffee.

Harry shrugs. “Maybe he’s… not that bad,” he says. “I mean… he probably didn’t want to kill me, after all.”

Dele chuckles. “Eric is a big goof under that tough facade, actually,” he says. “He wouldn’t kill you. He would kill  _ for _ you, though.”

The sound of engine from outside makes him glance up. No cars ever go here, there’s a dead end and theirs is the last in the short row of houses. Either someone got lost, or it’s much, much worse.

“We might have a problem,” he says carefully.

Harry looks outside the window and pales. It tells Dele all he needs to know. He pulls him away from the window and grabs his phone.

“What do you want to do?” Harry looks at him incredulously. “Call the police? On Kane’s men? Are you mad?”

“No. Luckily, this house apparently hid some people during the war… and old plans work the best,” Dele says and presses a particular spot in one of the beams that looks like a simple knot in the wood. A quiet click sounds somewhere in the room, and Dele jumps to a small rug promptly, lifting it up. As it shows, the rug is attached to something that looks like a trap door. 

“What is this?” Harry asks, worry seeping from his voice.

“An emergency hideout,” Dele explains, revealing a small crawl space.

“I thought you had guns in this house!”

“I’m afraid Eric is the one who knows how to use a gun, not me,” Dele says and motions towards the crawl space. “Get in.”

“No,” Harry whispers. “Not again, don’t make me…”

Dele sighs. “I’m right behind you, don’t worry, and I’m not a fan of it either.”

The ominous sound of steps on the gravel outside works better than his words. Harry crawls in, blinking up at Dele like he’s afraid Dele will just slam the door shut and leave him there to die. But Dele slips in the free space, which is not as big as he would like, and closes the door behind them. He sends an emergency message to Eric and switches off his phone.

Just then, the door of the house screeches.

Harry presses his body closer to Dele’s, trembling. Dele drapes a leg over his to keep him still, and clamps a hand over his mouth.

“That stupid old idiot!” a voice says above their heads. “When he said it was solved, I though he really meant  _ solved _ !” 

“Yeah,” another voice agrees.

“He could’ve said said he was a fucking pervert, I’d have gotten him a toy that we wouldn’t be afraid of losing.”

Dele fights the urge to jump through the floor and strangle them. Harry starts shaking even more.

“Now where the fuck is the little rat?”

“He has to be here, man,” the voice says. 

“But where? The house isn’t that big. Are you sure we’re in the right number?”

They don’t hear the first man’s answer since the two knock something over. Dele hopes to God it wasn’t his computer. He slides his hand in Harry’s hair. It seems to calm the boy down a little bit, but it’s more of a therapy for Dele, actually. 

“Let’s look upstairs,” one of the men says.

There is the sound of steps on the staircase. It’s impossible to move quietly in an old house like this, with the floor creaking and doors screeching, so at least they know where the men are going. Dele still has to hold Harry tighter, because he seems to be eager to jump out of the crawl space and run for his life, which would be a terrible idea.

After what seems like eternity, the men stop rummaging through the bedrooms and come back down. 

“I swear, if we’re in the wrong number, I’ll kill you,” one of the voices says.

“We’re not. I’m telling you, the rat has to be somewhere in here.”

“Tell that to Kane if we don’t find him,” the first voice retorts. “He’s going to-“

A quick sequence of what have to be gunshots cuts him off, and despite being actually under the floor, Dele still covers Harry’s body with his and screws his eyes shut like he expects a bullet in the head at any moment. He hates, hates, hates violence.

Then there’s silence. He hopes it’s a good sign.

 

***

 

Eric pushes the knot and opens the trap door. Under the floor, he finds Dele holding the shaking kid in his arms, looking like his own composure is hanging by a thread. 

“Hello there,” Eric says.

“Hey,” Dele mumbles. “You took damn long.”

Eric grins and reaches down to pull Harry out of the crawl space. He has to  _ really _ pull him out, since the boy is unable to cooperate. Dele crawls out himself, swearing and trying to get the dust off his clothes.

“Kane’s men, I suppose,” Eric says.

Dele nods, taking hold of the kid and leading him to the kitchen. “Seems like Kane now knows that the judge lost his boy,” Dele says. 

“The question is… how did they find us?” Eric asks, closing the door to the room with the bodies, because they can deal with that later, and the scenery is apparently causing Harry great distress.

“Are you asking me?” Dele raises his brows. “You had to lead them on somehow, leave a trace in the judge’s house. They spoke about him at least.”

“I’m not an idiot!” Eric snaps. “Do you think I dropped my ID in there or what?”

“Well, they found us somehow, and they’ll find us again, if we don’t get out of here quickly,” Dele says.

“Not until they find out their friends did a really poor job of murdering us,” Eric smirks. 

The kid lets out a wailing sound, and Dele gives Eric a murderous stare. “Nobody is going to murder any of us,” he says firmly. He takes Harry’s hand in his and rubs it gently with his thumb. “What is…” he pauses.

Eric glances up as Dele frowns and then covers his eyes with his hand.

“Shit!” he says. “Shit, fuck, we’re so fucked! Why didn’t I think of this?” 

“What?” Eric asks, totally dumbfounded.

“I know how they found us,” Dele says. “Microchip.”

_ Fuck, indeed. _

“We need to get rid of that,” Eric says slowly, trying to think as he speaks. He never knows how to do both at the same time.

Dele nods, his face beyond worried.

Harry blinks. “What?”

“I could get supplies at the vet’s, you know,” Eric offers.

“Eric,” Dele says warningly.

“What are you talking about?” Harry yells at them.

Dele shoots a quick look at Eric to shut him up before he can take a breath. Then he takes Harry’s hand in his again.

“You have a microchip, here,” he says, guiding the fingers of his other hand to the right spot, waiting until Harry feels the small lump. “That’s how they found us. And they will find us again, as long as it’s there. We need to get it out.”

Harry opens his mouth a few times, but no sound comes out. He looks at Eric first. “But I don’t remember…”

“Yeah,” Eric nods gravely, and although he knows Dele will probably kill him for it later, he decides it’s for the boy’s own good. “You probably don’t remember a lot of things. The sooner you come to terms with it, the better.”

Harry just stares at him. Then he looks at Dele with tears in his eyes. “But… it’s in my body. Under my skin, I… How do you want to…”

Eric clears his throat.

“No!”

Eric sighs. “Boy, if there was another way, trust me I’d do it, but… we don’t have much time, and it needs to get out.”

Harry turns to Dele like he’s drowning and looking for a rope. “Dele?”

“Yeah, it has to be done,” Dele says. “I’m sorry.”

Harry jumps up. “You’re not cutting into me!” he yells. 

“So what do you suggest?” Eric yells back. “Should I take you to the hospital and ask them to pretty please remove your microchip? I’m sure they’d do it with a fancy scalpel and with a local anesthetic, but maybe they wouldn’t even manage to stitch it up before Kane’s men would be there, firing a bullet in your pretty head. We need to do it here and now, before they realize you’re not dead yet.” 

Harry just looks at him like he doesn’t know if he should cry, or kill Eric, or run away. “Fine,” he says then.

Eric frowns. “Fine?”

“Yeah,” the kid shrugs and sits on the chair resignedly. “Do it. You’ll do it anyway. I want to at least think that I agreed to it.”

Eric exchanges worried glances with Dele. Apparently, the kid should have come with a manual.

 

***

 

Eric gathers all of the supplies he thinks he will need before walking into the living room. Somehow he feels confident about having everything he needs, but as always, his plans are not met with Dele’s appreciation.

“What the hell is that?” Dele hisses, looking at him.

“An improvised scalpel,” Eric says, holding up a spoon with a razor attached to the handle, probably with a hot glue gun. “Google said it worked.”

Dele rolls his eyes and shoots another mistrustful look at the bottle of vodka Eric is holding, and Dele’s tweezers he uses to get the tiny particles in his computers’ desktop. “I guess it’s better than nothing,” he sighs. “Give it to me.”

“No!” Harry says and curls up on the sofa, pointing a finger at Eric. “I want him to do it!”

Eric would say that Dele looks  _ hurt _ . He himself would rather not be the object of Harry’s sudden surge of trust. He kind of did hope Dele would do the job.

“Fine,” Dele says. “I’m going to pack our stuff in the meanwhile.”

“What did I do to deserve your trust all of a sudden?” Eric asks while cleaning the razor with the vodka to the best of his ability, and rubbing some of Dele’s hand sanitizer on his hands. “I thought you haven’t forgotten the injection yet.”

“Yeah, that’s it,” Harry mumbles. “At least you’ll do it quickly, like last time.”

“You bet,” Eric nods. “I’m not a fan of digging under people’s skin.”

He smears some of the vodka on Harry’s hand as well, although he’s not sure how much difference it will make. It’s probably still unsanitary as hell.

“Ready?” he asks.

“No,” Harry says. “Fuck, you can’t just…”

“From anesthetics we have option one, the vodka, and option two, something to bite down on,” Eric says, rolling up his handkerchief. “Since we’ll be on the run in the next hour or so, I would rather not drag you along drunk, so I hope you pick two.”

Harry narrows his eyes. “I hate you!” 

“Nothing new,” Eric smirks. “Open up.”

Harry complies almost too fast, a reflex that Eric doesn’t like in the slightest, but he still pushes the rolled up fabric between his teeth, grips his wrist firmly and grabs the provisory scalpel. 

Harry screams and hides his face behind his bent knees, but doesn’t try to twist his hand from Eric’s grip. For which Eric is grateful, because he doesn’t want to accidentally stab himself in the eye or something.

“If you want to faint, I’m not stopping you,” he mumbles. “Will make things easier for me.”

Because, truth to be told, looking for something the size of a grain of rice isn’t an easy task. He had kind of hoped it would be similar to looking for the right particle in a security system of a safe, but the human body doesn’t seem to resemble machines in the slightest. It’s just a bloody mess.

The sounds Harry is making don’t even sound human anymore, and Eric isn’t actually surprised when Dele appears at the doorstep, looking like he’s going to throw up. “What the hell…” he says.

“I got it!” Eric announces cheerfully and drops the tweezers with the microchip on the table.

Harry falls back on the sofa, wiping his tears with his other hand, breathing hard. When Dele pulls the handkerchief out of his mouth, he looks at the table full of bloodied mess, and sniffles. “Please tell me I still have all fingers,” he whispers.

“You do,” Eric answers instead of Dele, who is inspecting his work in the meanwhile.

“It definitely looks like it could use a stitch or two,” Dele says. 

“Sure, can you do that?” Eric asks.

“No.”

“Me neither. Problem solved, I’m slapping some gauze and band-aids on it,” Eric says. “He’s not gonna die of that.”

Dele hands him the first-aid kid he apparently dug out from their car since they don’t have one at home. 

“I’ll be waiting outside,” he says and runs out. 

Apparently, Eric’s surgery was more than his stomach could take.


	5. Five

“Would you mind telling us where we are going?” Dele asks when Eric takes a sharp turn that takes them off the highway.

“To a safe place,” Eric says contentedly, fingers tapping on the wheel. It drives Dele crazy.

“I hope it’s really safe,” he says. “Because you do realize that we will not only have Kane after us, but also the police, right?”

Eric looks at him with mild confusion.

“We left behind a house with two dead bodies inside,” Dele reminds him.

“Oh,” Eric says. “That could actually help us. The police will think they are us.”

“Sweet mother of God!” Dele exclaims, and even Harry giggles on the back seat. “How long do you think it will take the police to realize that they are  _ not _ us?”

“I don’t know,” Eric shrugs. “The police are dumb.”

“Dumber that you? I doubt it,” Dele sighs. 

“Well, if the police do find us, we could actually explain it to them,” Eric says. “I mean, it would be better than if Kane found us.”

“And that’s exactly why I want to know where we are going,” Dele says. “I swear, if you don’t tell me, I’m getting off.”

“At this speed? I doubt it,” Eric chuckles, but then sighs. “It’s an old cottage in the Cotswolds. End of the world, really. People know me there.”

“Excuse me?” Dele looks at him. “Why the hell would we go there, then?”

“Well, because that’s exactly what we need. It will be all like ‘hey, long time no see, came to finally repair you uncle’s old cottage before it falls apart?’ Not like ‘who the hell are these three weirdos who look like they’re hiding from the police’, you get me?”

“No,” Dele sighs. “But I’m too tired to kill you.”

 

* * *

 

The place Eric calls “safe” is indeed at the end of the world. The roads that lead to it can’t be really called roads anymore, and Dele is terribly carsick by the time they get there. Harry has been practically green since Eric almost cut his hand off, so he can’t judge how much Eric’s driving is responsible for him stumbling out of the car and just sitting in the grass and breathing deeply for ten minutes straight, but he can quite relate. 

When he comes to his senses a little bit more, he looks at the place that Eric claims used to belong to his uncle. And he wants to kill someone - preferably Eric. 

“You said this place was safe,” he says.

“It is!” Eric shrugs. “There’s no way Kane could find us here.”

“Kane may not find us here, but the house will fall on our heads as soon as we walk in, dammit!” Dele yells. “This is by no means safe for humans, and possibly not even for other creatures! Hell, I don’t want to know what lives in there!”

“Calm down, probably a few squirrels up there under the roof, you’re not afraid of them, are you?”

“They have fleas, Eric!” Dele growls, but takes a step towards the house.

“What do you say, kid?” Eric asks Harry, as though he desperately needs someone to appreciate his family heirloom.

“I like it,” Harry says. “I like everything that’s not a basement or a coffin.”

“That’s the spirit!” Eric praises him and grabs a bag from the trunk. 

Dele steps onto the front porch and almost gets slapped in the face by a loose plank. “Eric?” he growls.

“What?” Eric asks.

“You know that little story of yours about us coming here to repair the house?” Dele asks. “It will be actually true, because we need to do something about this place before it kills us.”

“I thought of that, don’t worry,” Eric says and unlocks the door. “I brought some tools, and the hardware store down in the village should be equipped enough.”

Dele gives him a death stare and walks in. “Eric, I will kill you!” he says.

The house looks like no one was in there for centuries, it’s dirty and almost empty, and everything looks like it’s about to fall apart. It also stinks like an antique shop. Then a terrible premonition comes over him. “Eric?” he says. “The electricity _does_ work here, right?”

Eric looks at him from where he is checking the security of the door - very questionable - and scratches his head. “Well, in theory, it should,” he says and tries to switch on the light. The lightbulb flickers, lets out a buzzing sound, and then dies. “But it might need some fixing.”

Dele howls desperately. 

 

* * *

 

After one night spent in complete darkness, with Dele nagging him about his laptop needing electricity to function, and Harry’s desperate pretending that he’s  _ not _ afraid of the dark, and  _ not _ moving his sleeping bag closer to Eric and Dele, Eric decides to pay the hardware store in the village a visit.

It’s been years since he was last here, but in places like this, people rarely leave. The owner of the store is still the same Eric remembers from his teenage years.

“Ah, long time no see,” he says when Eric walks in. “You haven’t been here since your uncle passed away.”

“No,” Eric says and looks around. “I thought it was time to finally do something about the house. Before it falls on my head.”

“I’m surprised it hasn’t happened yet,” the man chuckles. “You going to do it alone?”

“Nah, I brought a friend,” Eric says, deciding it would be best not to mention Harry at all. If they plan to hide him, then better pretend like he’s not there at all, so that the nosy neighbors don’t wish to meet him. “I need some long nails for the planks at the porch, they’re all loose.”

The man nods and rummages in the old-fashioned drawers while Eric collects other stuff from the shelves. “So what you’ve been doing all those years?”

Eric clears his throat. “Well, just… electronics, stuff like that. Security systems.”

“That must pay well,” the man says. “People are afraid of having things stolen nowadays.”

“Yeah,” Eric nods. “So how much will it be?”

 

* * *

 

He stops in the other store as well, because in the hurry, they didn’t really think about bringing enough food, and Dele is already caffeine-deprived. He’s sure that he won’t get energy drinks at this place, so he hopes at least for decent quality coffee.

The store is almost empty, save for the woman at the register, and a young boy standing by the cooler, apparently trying to decide which of the two brands of beer he should buy. 

Eric takes a basket and throws in a box of corn flakes, two bottles of milk, some bread and ham, and a huge bag of coffee. He doesn’t know if he will be able to fix the electricity well enough to make the stove usable, and neither of them can cook more than porridge and soup, so he doesn’t bother with buying real food. 

“Will that be all?” the woman asks.

“Oh… do you have bandages? Or band-aids at least?” Eric asks, remembering that they should probably change those he slapped on the cut in Harry’s hand. Also, if he gives Dele a hammer, it will probably result in some kind of injury sooner or later.

“I should have some band-aids in the back,” the woman says and pushes aside the curtain.

Eric taps his foot on the floor and looks around. The boy at the cooler quickly looks away, as if he were watching Eric all the time. Well, Eric thinks that he must look a bit weird, buying this kind of stuff. Cornflakes and band-aids.

The woman appears with two packs of band-aids and adds them to Eric’s bag. “Staying in the cottage near the woods, right?” she asks. “I live a bit further away, I saw a car in the morning.”

“Yeah,” Eric says, and makes a mental note to hide the car just in case.

“It needs to have something done about it, it’s high time,” she says and takes the money from Eric. “You brought friends?”

“One friend,” Eric says.

“Oh? Well, I thought… this is enough food for at least three,” she says.

“He’s really hungry,” Eric says. “Thank you. Bye.”

He grabs the bag and opens the door. The boy at the cooler has finally picked his beer and moves to the register now, but he is still looking at Eric like Eric is an alien. Eric rolls his eyes and starts towards the road that will take him to the cottage. He knows that Dele could die of caffeine withdrawal at any minute.

 

* * *

 

When Eric arrives at the cottage, Dele is trying to fix a lamp and Harry is watching him with doubt written all over his face.

“Jesus, leave the electricity to me,” Eric says. “I bring food. And coffee.”

“Which I will cook over the fire that I will start using a stick,” Dele makes a face. “ _ Nothing _ in this damned house works!”

“I also brought some band-aids. You could look at my handiwork, because we don’t want anyone to die of infection here.”

Dele gives him a death stare, but grabs the pack of band aids and the first-aid kit from their car and starts to peel off the old band-aids.

“So… you and Eric, are you…” Harry asks suddenly.

Dele looks at him. “Are we what?”

“I mean…” Harry says and makes a vague gesture.

“A couple?” Dele looks at him. “No. I mean, we… we kinda used to be. It didn’t work.”

“Oh.”

“We realized that we could either be together, or work together. And we are probably better at working together than being together.”

“Okay.”

Dele looks at the wound. It doesn’t look like there is anything wrong with it. It will probably leave a nasty scar, but it’s not bleeding, or swollen, or black, or whatever infection looks like. Harry also doesn’t complain about pain at all, although Dele has already noticed that Harry never complains about anything - probably because he doesn’t have good experience with complaining.

“Why are you asking?” Dele asks while putting clean bandages over it.

“Just curious,” Harry says, but when Dele looks at him, there is something mischievous in his eyes, and it makes Dele’s throat dry.

“Well, I think I fixed the stuff!” Eric’s voice sounds from the door and Dele almost jumps up. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” Dele says. “Seems like he will live.”

“Cool,” Eric says. “We should hide the car, too. People have already noticed. Which, I mean, is fine since they know I’m here, but still, we don’t need anyone to take down our license number.”

“Our license number is fake,” Dele reminds him.

“I don’t want to have to make a new fake one.”

Dele sighs deeply. “Fine, you go and hide it. I’m going to try to make some food and coffee here, but if the stove kills me, it’s your fault!”   
  



	6. Six

Eric seems to have officially nominated himself as the foreman charged with supervising the works on the house. Dele has to give it to him that he’s charged himself with repairing everything that has to do with electricity, but it’s not like he is the one making sure the walls don’t crumble. Dele feels like killing Eric with the hammer as soon as he comes close enough, until he looks over at Harry. The kid is hammering down planks on the porch to make it a bit safer, and despite the poor job he is doing, he looks  _ happy _ .

“We need to do something about the attic,” Eric says.

“That’s what I’ve been saying for days now!” Dele mumbles. 

“Yeah, I’ll have to get some cement.”

“You do that. I hear the damn squirrels there every night,” Dele says.

Eric looks at him in disbelief. “Dele, I meant to make the floors more stable. I’m not going to cement the squirrels in or anything.”

“Too bad,” Dele says. “I’m afraid they’ll come down one day and chew on the cables of my laptop.”

Eric just rolls his eyes. “I need to go to town to get the cement and planks,” he says. “Probably won’t make it back until morning.”

“What?” Harry’s voice sounds from the door.

“What?” Dele asks. 

“Yeah, can’t really send the two of you,” Eric shrugs. 

“You can’t just fuck off, man!” Dele says. “Do I have to remind you that you’re the only one with a gun here?”

“Calm down, Dele!” Eric rolls his eyes. “There’s nothing to fear, except the squirrels. Or how many people have you seen around here?”

Dele just shrugs. The cottage is really at the end of the world, and it seems that nobody lives this high up. Also, if the police is after them, they are doing a poor job, because with Eric’s ways, they were bound to find them days ago.  

“I’ll take the car,” Eric says. “Maybe better pretend nobody’s here.”

“You bet,” Dele growls. “We will do just that.”

 

***

 

Right after Eric leaves, Dele locks the door, closes the blinds and makes himself a huge cup of coffee. Harry contents himself with a can of coke. 

“Why did you and Eric save me?” he asks as they sit on the sofa in the only room that is kind of habitable at the moment.

Dele looks at him and shrugs. “It was Eric’s idea, actually. I guess Eric is much… softer than he looks. Or he has some strong moral code.”

Harry laughs. “For a burglar, yeah, he does.”

Dele smiles. “Stealing things or hacking someone’s computer is one thing. I mean, Eric wouldn’t even steal someone’s money if it meant the person would be hungry the next day. He wouldn’t take a commission like that. He only does things that align with the moral code of his. Stealing the documents from the judge’s house did. It could actually help someone.” He puts the mug on the armrest of the couch. “When he found you there, it really shook him. I could tell. I’ve known him for years, and I know when something’s not right.”

Harry nods and pulls on the threads of his sleeve where he tore it while repairing the porch. “You said it was Eric’s idea. But you were against the idea?”

Dele sighs. “Not against, but…” He actually feels guilty now. He was partial to the idea of leaving Harry there. It was just too much of a risk, and Dele has never liked too much risk. He likes the adrenaline of getting past security systems, running against time while holding a system in check, having only three attempts to guess a password. The adrenaline that involves guns, blood and dead people, that’s not for him. “I didn’t think we could do it. Save you, you know. But Eric did, and he managed to persuade me. Although I still don’t agree with some of the methods he used.”

Harry smirks. “You mean stabbing me with a syringe and using an anesthetic meant for dogs on me.”

“Exactly.”

Harry chuckles and then scoots closer to Dele. Dele holds his breath when Harry lays his head on his chest like it’s the most natural thing in the world. “I was mad for a moment, you know, but he really did that for my own good,” he says. “And it was by far not the worst thing anyone’s ever done to me.”

Dele raises his hand tentatively and runs his fingers through Harry’s hair. Harry actually purrs and wraps his arms around Dele’s torso, like he doesn’t know what he’s doing to Dele, or what it’s doing to Dele. 

“I’m…” Dele starts.

He doesn’t have time to protest any more, because Harry climbs him like a tree and smashes their mouths together. Dele falls back against the armrest. The mug smashes on the ground, coffee splashing everywhere. Fuck.

“I don’t think this is…” Dele says.

“You don’t want to?” Harry asks, pouting like a child that’s being denied another scoop of ice-cream.

Damn, Dele  _ wants to _ . It’s just that he remembers that handling Harry is like handling a grenade. “I’m not sure that  _ you _ want to.”      

Harry smiles. “I do. I thought I’ve been making it very obvious.” 

Dele looks at him one last time, searching for any signs that the kid doesn’t know what he’s doing, but Harry is grinning like a sly fox, pressed flush against his body. He knows  _ damn well _ what he’s doing. 

More than ever before, Dele feels like he is diving right into a pool of trouble, but he couldn’t care less at the moment. He flips them over and pushes the coffee table with his laptop away. 

 

***

 

The sun is not yet up when the door flies open, despite the lock on it. After all, the lock is nothing fancy. They should have thought about changing that one first.

When the two men with guns burst in, Dele thinks that these are the last seconds of his life, but the men don’t kill any of them. They seem to be waiting for something, or rather someone.

He expects this Harry Kane to walk through the door now and shoot them both, but the tall man who walks through the door does not look like Kane, from what Dele was able to google, and Harry looks like he’s somehow relieved it’s not the worst option happening.

“Fer,” he whispers.

The man folds his arms and looks at Harry like he’s disappointed, but also somehow… amused. “Oh boy, you’re in trouble,” he sighs.

While two of the men keep restraining Dele, they are seemingly taking no notice of Harry, letting him and the tall man have their talk. Harry doesn’t look like he wants to try to run away anyway. He’s pressed to the wall as much as possible, and looks like he’s completely petrified.

“This is not Kane, is it?” Dele growls, glancing at him.

“No,” Harry says. “It’s Fernando Llorente. Kane’s right hand.”

“Sometimes also the left,” Llorente smirks. There’s a heavy accent on his words. “Now you’re supposed to introduce your new friend to me, Harry. Which one is it, Eric or Dele?”

Dele’s heart jumps somewhere to his throat. Maybe Harry wasn’t exaggerating about Kane and his men.

“It’s Dele,” Harry whispers. “Please, don’t hurt him.”

One of Llorente’s companions chuckles. “Oh, don’t hurt  _ him _ … first time I see you thinking about someone else and not just you.”

Llorente just smiles, as though it’s a joke only they understand.

 “We already cried for you, but since you’re alive and well, we’ll take you home,” he says. “Kane wants to have a talk with you.”

Harry looks like he’s about to cry now. “Fer, please…”

Fernando tuts. “No, no, no. No begging, sweetheart. Be a big boy about it.”

Dele feels almost physically sick from the sweet tone Llorente is using, but Harry looks like he’s used to it. Overall, there’s something in the way they talk that Dele just isn’t getting.

Then Llorente holds out his hand. “Come here, and maybe I’ll leave your friend alive.”

Harry blinks. “You promise?”

“You know you’ve always been my favorite,” Llorente smirks. “I’ve indulged you more than I should have.”

Harry unglues himself from the wall and walks up to him hesitantly. 

“That’s a good boy,” Llorente smiles. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you, but maybe there’s hope. Maybe we can correct that behavior, if Kane forgives you… of which I’m not sure.”

Finally, the taller of the two men moves and grabs Harry’s arms, twisting them behind his back. Harry winces, but doesn’t make a sound.

“You fucking bastards!” Dele yells.

“No, Dele, it’s… it’s alright,” Harry whispers.

“That’s it,” Llorente says and holds up a piece of black fabric. “Now take a deep breath, I know you hate this.”

“Jesus, don’t baby him, Llorente!” one of the men sighs.

“Who’s in charge here, eh?” Llorente asks, securing the blindfold. “We had to move after you rattled on us, I wouldn’t want to pack all my stuff again, so it’s just a precaution. Not like you’ll get the chance to rattle on us again, though.”

Whether it’s the words or the blindfold, something has positively sent Harry into a state of complete panic. As the two men lead him out, he’s gasping for breath like they’ve just fished him out of water.

Llorente makes a few steps to Dele. “Don’t feel bad about it,” he says. “Harry is just like that. He will get you in trouble sooner or later. You didn’t know what you were dealing with. But trust me, it’s better like this.”

Then Llorente raises his hand with the gun and Dele screws his eyes shut. There’s only a moment of sharp pain, and then everything goes black.

 

***

 

Eric hands Dele a wet rag and watches him put it on the back of his head.

“I don’t get how they could find us,” he says.

Dele looks at him, and Eric is quite sure that he would hit him if he didn’t possibly have a concussion. “Me neither. But they knew our names. I guess they are not as dumb as we thought. I mean, we should have listened to what Harry had to say about Kane.”

“Shit,” Eric curses. “Well, if Kane gets his hands on him, he will kill him.”

“We have to find him before he does,” Dele says.

“How do you want to find him? Put up “Missing” posters?” Eric spreads his arms. “If anyone knew where Kane was, they would have found him a long time ago, wouldn’t they?”

Dele gives him a death stare. “If you think Kane is smarter than me, I don’t know why I’m still speaking to you,” he says and switches on his tablet. “He’s not the only one who knows how to use a microchip. Well, he surely doesn’t know how to reprogram it. Saving money at its best.”

“Where… where did you put it?” Eric blinks, not bothering to provide praise for Dele since Dele seems to be self-sufficient in this aspect. “I thought you were against jabbing needles in people without their consent.”

“I sew it in his shoelace,” Dele says matter-of-factly. “I don’t think the first thing they will do is take off his shoes, so…”

Eric just stares. “You’re serious?” he asks then. “You want to take on Kane? Alone?”

“No, dumbass, I want to take on Kane with you,” Dele says. “Or you’re out?”

Eric runs a hand over his face and sighs. “Nah, I’m in, of course,” he says. “I always knew I’d die by your dumb side, dammit.”

Dele flashes him a smile. “I appreciate that,” he says. “But we’re not dead yet.”

 

***

 

Harry hears a loud screeching sound, without a doubt some heavy door being opened, and then the blindfold is taken off. When his eyes adjust to the light, he takes in the room that looks like some abandoned office. There are drawers and something that looks like a register, and then a desk. Harry Kane is sitting behind the desk, and he looks like a child having his favorite toy delivered to his door.

“Long time no see,” he smirks. “Take a seat, we need to talk.”

_ Take a seat _ means that Vertonghen throws him on the chair and Llorente takes place behind it, resting his hands on his shoulders almost comfortingly, but with the underlying threat of them wrapping around his throat or snapping his neck the moment Kane tells him to.

“You could have just told us that you wanted out, Harry,” Kane says in the tone of a scolding mother.

“You would have left me?” Harry whispers.

“No,” Kane smiles. “But we would have just killed you then. Just think about how much pain and suffering you could have saved you. Both past and future.”

Harry would jump out of the chair if it wasn’t for Llorente’s hands on his shoulders, keeping him in place. 

“Though it might have been my fault as well,” Kane sighs. “Tell me, what broke you, boy? So that I can learn from my mistakes.”

Harry takes a sharp breath. “I…” 

“I might have an idea,” Vertonghen mumbles somewhere across the room.

Kane turns to him. “You were saying, Jan?”

“Nothing,” Vertonghen says. “Just that letting him witness a murder was probably not the best idea.”

“It wasn’t  _ my _ idea,” Kane says and looks at Harry. “But I would expect you to understand, boy. Sometimes people are impossible to discipline. No matter what you give them or do to them, they will betray you.”

Harry knows very well that they are talking about him now, not the boy they stabbed to death against the window of the car Harry was sitting in. He still sees it in his dreams. He can’t get the images out of his head even after all this time. He can’t stop thinking about it. About how strangely quiet and fast it all was. He wonders if his own murder will be this quick and quiet as well. Something tells him that Kane has something worse in mind for him. After all, that boy only betrayed their gang to another gang. Not to the police.

“What do you want me to say?” he whispers. “It doesn’t matter what I say, you’ll kill me anyway. Better get on with it.”

Kane exchanges an amused glance with Llorente. “Boy’s brave now,” he says. “Don’t want to also tell me how I should kill you? Eh? You have preferences, or are you leaving it up to me?”

Harry feels his heart beating madly in his chest. Kane is playing with him like a cat with a mouse now. He  _ will _ kill him, of that Harry is sure, but he wants to enjoy it first. 

“Llorente, take him out of my sight now,” Kane says. “I can’t look at his dumb face any longer, or I will start to believe he truly didn’t mean it.”

Vertonghen chuckles somewhere in the room. Llorente pulls Harry up and wraps an arm around his shoulders.

“You’re not going to kill me now?” Harry asks Kane like he wants to be sure. Like it matters if it’s now or later.

“No. I need to think about what I’m going to do with you,” Kane sighs and rubs his temples. “You’re truly giving me headache, boy.”

Harry hides in Llorente’s arms. It still gives him at least a false sense of comfort, and it’s better than nothing. If something is giving Kane headache, it’s not going to end well.  _ He _ is not going to end well.

“And… Llorente?”

Llorente glances up, not even bothering to stop patting Harry’s back. “What?”

“I need to know what he told those friends of his,” Kane says, and blood runs cold in Harry’s veins. “Maybe we’ll have to take care of them as well.”


End file.
